m4/3 Native Lenses - Part 2

Lenses for m4/3 cameras - Short opinions about the current m4/3 lenses is a piece by Thom Hogan at:- http://bythom.com/m43lenses.htm 

Lots of people have weighed in with opinions as to how right he is and have come out with their own lists. Not wishing to left out on something as much fun as that!  Here's mine.

Like Mr. Hogan I haven't used them all. The Panasonic 14mm f2.8 pancake, 100-300mm, 8mm fisheye and 3-D lens are missing from the list.

SUPERZOOMS

Panasonic 14-140mm f/4-5.8

When this lens first appeared with the GH1 it seemed an engineering marvel in that it focused silently and continuously during video. Like many superzooms it tries its best to give a reasonable image quality across the range and mostly succeeds. Its not incredibly sharp but does the job. It does have the best built in image stabilisation I've ever used. I was able to get sharp pictures at 1/15th. sec. at the 140mm end, which is remarkable. It is quite a slow lens and this limits its usefulness. Also other lenses, including the much cheaper 14-42mm, and the new Olympus zooms now also have silent and continuous focusing.

Olympus 14-150mm f/4-5.6 

In terms of what this will do its very similar to the Panasonic zoom. It doesn't have built in stabilisation so its smaller and lighter. I use one of these in preference to the Panasonic for that reason. In terms of image quality its very similar to the 14-140mm, perhaps just a fraction sharper, though there's nothing in it really. If you want to use a superzoom, whichever of these two you choose will be down to what the lens offers, and whether you want to use it on a Olympus or Panasonic camera. To some the stabilisation is important. Having lived without it for most of my photographic life, its not that important to me. Do be aware that the OIS in the Panasonic does little to help when you're shooting video.

MACRO

Panasonic Leica Macro-Elmarit 45mm f/2.8

This lens sometimes gets negative remarks and for the life of me I cannot understand why. Its a beautiful sharp lens. I sold mine to help pay for my Leica M9 and I've always regretted it. I may yet buy another. Its not the fastest AF but macro lenses are often like that. For some reason my copy was sharper on my Olympus E-P2 than my GH1. Don't know why that was.

This lens oozes class and is almost on a par with the 20mm f1.7 in my opinion as the best Panasonic can offer for m4/3. 

TELEPHOTO ZOOM

Panasonic 45-200mm f/4-5.6

Some people rate this lens but I don't. To me its the worst lens in the entire m4/3 range. It is capable of reasonably sharp results - in my case at 100mm and f/11, but I was unable to get satisfactory results from mine, even on a tripod. I found it a very disappointing lens. 

MANUAL FOCUS

Voigtlander 25mm f/0.95

Voigtlander is the third manufacturer to make native lenses for the system, and this is their first offering. If you've seen mine and others rave reviews of it you'll get some idea of its credentials. A beautifully made lens with a fast aperture, semi-macro focusing and extraordinary sharpness stopped down. I'm currently testing this on a GH2 versus a Zeiss 50mm on my Leica M9 and its really quite close in terms of results. The Leica combination is winning at the moment but not by very much at all - more on that later. Its expensive, its manual focus and its quite heavy but it is a wonderful lens if you're in the market for a very fast standard lens.

So there it is, my opinions on the current m4/3 lenses. I use a lot of alternative and legacy lenses as well but there are to my mind four excellent lenses here. Two absolute classics in the Lumix 20mm f/1.7 and the Voigtlander 25mm f/0.95 and two very good ones in the Panasonic Leica 45mm f/2.8 and the Olympus 9-18mm f/4-5.6. Ultimately how good a lens is depends on how you use it, and whether it gets you the pictures that you want. We all use them in different ways and for different purposes so its very much a personal choice.

David

"Film" look

I shot my last roll of film in August 2001. I was an early convert to digital cameras and have used them ever since. While appreciating their quality and workflow advantages, I have always been somewhat disappointed by the "look" of digital camera images.
By this I mean the relative "flatness" of the raw file. This has its plus side of course, as the images have a certain "elasticity" when it comes to post-processing. Leica M8 images are an exception to this as they are seriously "punchy" right from the start.

When shooting film I used Fuji Velvia 50 "pushed" one stop, which gave great contrast & colour, but which required careful exposure and composition to avoid blocked shadows & blown highlights. Since I was working as a travel photographer at the time, this type of image proved very popular.

For my digital landscape work in particular I have never abandoned this look. I always post-process every image I take, & in many instances I will boost the colour and contrast. I have often been asked whether I still shoot on film & I suspect this is the reason why.

Too often I see images which I feel could have significantly more impact if processed with a "film" look.

These images shot yesterday are a good example. The UK is experiencing some torrid weather at the moment, but when the sun appears the light is wonderful. Through a combination of road works & tailbacks I ended up in a place I never intended to go! Broadway Tower in a gale looked magnificent against a deep blue sky. Looking at the files when I returned home, I realised they needed something more to recapture the reality of what I saw. I even used my Tiffen software filter programme to add a fake polariser effect to some of the shots.

While digital capture is useful in so many ways, it does often struggle to portray the drama of the world in a convincing way. Fortunately there are the tools available to rectify this.

A few hours of Sun

This has been a miserable November. The weather has been wet, dull and uninspiring. In a year when the autumn colours are very vivid this has been disappointing. However for a few hours yesterday afternoon the clouds parted and I took advantage of this for a trip to Warwick and a walk alongside the River Avon.
The light was clear and bright and with the autumn sun low in the sky, it was one of those days that landscape photographers dream about.
I took my GH1 + 7-14, 20mm & 45-200 lenses. I never cease to be impressed by the (lack of) weight of my m4/3 outfits. All of this packed into a shoulder bag and I carried it around for a few hours without noticing.
I'm not sure I'm ever going back to DSLR's. Photographing is a real pleasure once more. The picture taking is fine with heavier outfits but carrying around a large camera + lenses takes much of the pleasure out of that for me. One of the reasons that I sold my D3X was because I was "forcing" myself to take it out. When you pay that much for a camera, and with the incredible resolution it made no sense to leave it at home. However on many occasions I would finish earlier than I intended as the weight was very tiring. Not so with my Panasonic system.
I'm turning into a real Lumix fanboy. (Boy!) This is an extraordinary system. I've been wondering lately whether to cancel my Leica M9 order, as the results I'm getting with my G-series kit are so good. The 20mm F/1.7 is possibly the best lens I've ever owned. The more I use it, the more I like it. The 7-14 is not far behind. This is definitely the best super-wide I've ever used and its difficult to get it off the camera.
The full-size high-res images that I've posted here jump off the screen at me. Wonderful colours, sharp with a "3-D" quality. I read recently in a lens review that F/6.3 is the "sweet spot" on many of the Lumix lenses, so I decided to stick with that for most of the pictures. The results were impressive & the 7-14 really shone at this aperture. The weather helped as its been stuck at F4 for a while.
I have noticed one thing recently. The acceptance rate for my G-series pictures at some of the more "picky" libraries who market my work is very high. Very close to 100%. This is higher than my DX3, Leica M8 or Canon 5DMkII pictures. This includes libraries for whom I have to interpolate the images up to 48MB.
The M9 still beckons but its pull seems to getting weaker by the day!

Wedding with Panasonic G series and Canon 5D MkII

Taylor Stockwin Wedding Video Sample from taylorstockwin on Vimeo.

This is a short sample from the video shot with the cameras on:-http://davidmartynhughes.blogspot.com/2009/10/g-series-wedding-part-1.html

Cameras & lenses used were:-2 x Panasonic Lumix GH1, Panasonic Lumix GF1, Lumix 7-14mm zoom, Lumix 20mm f/1.7, Lumix 14-140mm zoom, Lumix 45-200mm zoom, Nikon 50mm f/1.2.

Images were taken using a Canon 5D MkII using 28-135mm IS zoom, 28mm f/1.8, 50mm f/1.8 & 85mm F/1.8.

B

G - Series wedding (part 2)

Some images taken with the cameras.

Anecdote 1

At one point I was walking around taking some stills with the G1 + 20mm lens + Metz 48 AF-1 flash, when I was approached by a photographer. When he began with "I've been watching you..." I wondered what was coming next. However the conversation was about the Lumix cameras & he was asking me how they performed "in the field" He too was getting pretty fed up with bulky heavy DSLR's & was also looking for alternatives.

Anecdote 2

The second from top picture is taken with a 45-200 zoom at full zoom. (200mm F/5.6 ISO 400 1/13th sec Tripod) This is a 400mm in 35mm terms. The still image was taken from the back of the church and there was no other way to get the shot. As is usually the case, we as photographers were required to respect the ceremony & not go roaming about at will. There's no way that we would ever consider carrying a 400mm lens around for the occasional shot.
This is where the 2x crop factor of m4/3 comes into its own. Its a picture that was very important to the clients & one they asked us to get, if possible.

Lumix 45-200

This is the telephoto half of the two kit zooms Panasonic released with the G1 last year.
Its a useful lens in terms of range & in the style of the lumix m4/3 lenses, small & light.
Initial testing suggests its OK in terms of quality, though nothing special.
Its a very useful lens for GH1 video however, with a 35mm eqivalent of 400mm. I don't use long lenses very often, but its nice to have one around when you need it.

G Series- Pro?

I have it in my head to see whether I can use this as a "pro" kit over the next few months. A back taking its revenge on me for years of abuse has forced me to re-consider my options.
I've no problems with using this for my stock library work and I have no problems regarding the quality. Certainly in good light.
Its going to be interesting to see how it all copes with different jobs and different conditions & how well Panasonic puts this stuff together.
I'm not brave enough to dump the Canon 5D MkII outfit yet & my plan is to ease this in slowly.
It may all end in disaster & useless bits of broken plastic but I'm going to give it a try.